Review: Teens in 'Sycamore' take their cues from John Hughes

“Sycamore” at Raven Theatre has echoes of John Hughes movies as suburban teens try to figure out how to claim their identities.

“Sycamore” at Raven Theatre has echoes of John Hughes movies as suburban teens try to figure out how to claim their identities.

(Dean La Prairie photo)

Kerry ReidChicago Tribune

A vague whiff of a John Hughes movie hangs in the air over Sarah Sander's "Sycamore," in which three disaffected suburban teens attempt to figure out how to claim their identity without causing each other more damage. But Sander, an emerging, New York-based playwright, takes some of the off-the-shelf crises of Hughes-land (out-of-touch parents, romantic triangles) and gives them a coating of contemporary sensibilities.

It's a show that tends to work better in parts than as a fully realized piece. But those parts are shown off to generally good effect in director Devon de Mayo's world-premiere staging for Raven Theatre. It helps that the three young actors at the center of the play bring the right mix of adolescent bravado and uncertainty to the story.

Celia Jacobs (Selina Fillinger) is a high school senior with a "fast" past who is just trying to pass as a cheerleader and drama club kid until she can graduate. She also harbors guilt for her part in precipitating the suicide attempt of her younger gay brother, Henry (Julian Larach), who caught his sister and his former boyfriend en flagrante at a cast party months earlier.

Their parents also struggle to redefine themselves. Father David (Tom Hickey) has given up his college teaching career in favor of the less-complicated role of line cook at a local diner, while mom Louise (Robyn Coffin) sublimates her inability to protect her family by overachieving in her greenhouse garden, where she produces more tomatoes than anyone knows what to do with.

The new kid in town lights the tinderbox in the sibling relationships as the play begins. John Keller (Johnathan Nieves) is the next-door neighbor, newly arrived from Los Angeles to the sleepy streets of suburbia. He comes with a passion for photography and a sophisticated divorced mom, Jocelyn (Jaslene Gonzalez), who drinks her feelings instead of attending to her own art.

Henry and John bond over Fellini films (which Henry first saw during his weeks in the hospital), but the latter feels a real pull toward brittle Celia, who warns him about leading her brother on. "I get you. I see through your whole act," he tells her, sounding a bit like Judd Nelson's John Bender in Hughes' "The Breakfast Club."

Celia denies being attracted to John, but both he and Henry notice that she's rehearsing for her latest audition in front of her house, in full view of John. (In a cunning touch, she's carrying the script of Beth Henley's dysfunctional-siblings classic, "Crimes of the Heart.") Yet she resists his requests to photograph her, as if he'd take something away from her in the process.

Where Sander really nails her teenage characters is in the need to have something — or someone — that belongs entirely to them. Henry's penchant for stealing Celia's clothes may suggest confusion over his gender identity. Or it may simply be a way of getting attention from her. Hickey's David observes to Celia, "You both seem to enjoy taking things that aren't yours." But it's the nature of teenagers to not fully understand boundaries — physical or emotional. Or to know what to do with something they want once they get it. By comparison, Coffin and Hickey bring a bittersweet tone of regret to David and Louise's relationship — as if they are already saying goodbye to the things they loved best about each other, and themselves.

Fillinger, whose own play, "Faceless," just closed at Northlight Theatre, brings a compelling sense of guilt and resentment to her interactions with Larach's vulnerable Henry. Nieves' pot-smoking John feels less like a rebel and more like a kid who figures that he may as well enjoy some of the fringe benefits of having to be a second adult in the house with his scattered mom.

Sander's story feels underdeveloped, and there's a palpable sense of rushing toward thematic closure by the end. But "Sycamore" demonstrates that she's got a deft hand with dialogue and an empathy for characters who are trying to find comfort in mundanity after upheaval, while still holding on to bigger dreams.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 17, 2017, in the On the Town section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Dashes of John Hughes resonate in teen drama" —
Today's paperToday's paper | Subscribe